National
Cyber Security Partnership Makes Recommendations on Early
Warning
Arlington,
Va., March 18, 2004 – Leading cyber security
authorities recommended today that the nation build a "network
of early warning networks" to generate and share the
type of information needed to ward off cyber attacks on critical
infrastructure.
The National Cyber Security Partnership Task Force on Early Warning called
for creation of an Early Warning Alert Network (EWAN) in order to cut across
industry boundaries and disciplines and assure that appropriate stakeholders
have the advanced information they need in order to prevent attacks, mitigate
impacts and remediate systems. In addition, the task force called on the federal
government to develop a National Crisis Coordination Center (NCCC) by 2006.
The center would coordinate analysis, warning, response, training and R&D
among critical infrastructure-sector experts as well as representatives from
federal, state and local government. The focus of the NCCC is on addressing
priority remediation of systemic vulnerabilities in national level infrastructures,
not just cyber security.
Early Warning Task Force Chairman Guy Copeland, vice president at CSC, said, "Information
sharing is a critical component of cyber security. But as we analyzed the good
work now being performed by government agencies and private sector organizations,
we did not see a mechanism that would foster exchange across industry boundaries
and professional disciplines. We believe that EWAN will become the resource
for trusted community-to-community communication. We look forward to working
with the Department of Homeland Security and information sharing organizations
to make EWAN and the NCCC a success."
Other
co-chairs of the Early Warning Task Force include Suzanne Gorman,
managing director, Corporate Information Security at SIAC,
and Rich Pethia, director of the CERT Centers at Carnegie Mellon
University.
The National Cyber Security Partnership represents a major private sector effort
to harden America’s critical information infrastructure through collaborative
action. The effort began with the February 2003 publication of the National
Strategy to Secure Cyberspace, and accelerated at the National Cyber Security
Summit in December.
The Information Technology Association of America served as secretariat for
the partnership’s Early Warning Task Force. A copy of task force recommendations
as well as other information, including participating organizations, is available
on the National Cyber Security Partnership website at www.cyberpartnership.org
The Early Warning Task Force was one of two partnership task forces to release
recommendations today. The Awareness Task Force also released its recommendations,
which are also available at the partnership website. Partnership task forces
on corporate governance, technical standards and software development will
release recommendations later this month.
The National Cyber Summit Partnership is led by the Business Software Alliance,
the Information Technology Association of America, TechNet and the U.S. Chamber
of Commerce. |
